


kingfisher

by somethingdifferent



Category: Midsommar (2019)
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/M, guys how fucked was this movie too, thats p much the whole movie anyway lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-27 04:54:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19783681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/somethingdifferent/pseuds/somethingdifferent
Summary: She feels sick to death of crying. Sick to death of grief.Here, her body surrounded by flowers, her heart in her throat, Dani begins to smile. The sun shines down.[dani/pelle; midsommar post canon]





	kingfisher

Tell me true: to whose authority do you consign your soul?

** Joanna Newsom **

_Gone mad_ is what they say, and sometimes _Run mad_ , as if mad is a different direction, like west; as if mad is a different house you could step into, or a separate country entirely. But when you go mad you don't go any other place, you stay where you are. And somebody else comes in.

** Margaret Atwood **

A few weeks ago, Dani had never left the country.

At a party almost a year ago, before everything (her sister, sick and silent, eking carbon monoxide), Christian had almost gone home with someone else. She had not noticed at first, had been too distracted by a text ( _dani i cant do this anymore i cant i cant im going to die_ ). She had been in the bathroom trying to calm her sister down.

It had been Josh who pointed out Christian talking to a girl, some undergrad with a short skirt and a bright smile. He had said it gently, quietly. He wasn't trying to embarrass her. He was always the easiest of Christian's friends to get along with. His indifference to her allowed him to share things easily, offer her small kindnesses without comment. After everything (her parents open-mouthed, already dead, the phone ringing through), he had said only, _I'm sorry for your loss_ , nothing else, no other comment, and for that she was grateful.

Later, Dani will remember Mark smirking from the couch, his light beer swaying dangerously in his hand. She will remember Pelle standing a few feet away, glancing nervously between her and Christian. When Pelle saw her walk up, he smiled. He tried to cover for Christian half-heartedly. She and Christian fought all the way back to her apartment, until she was crying, and he refused to say I love you before he left.

Two months later her whole family was dead.

She feels sick to death of crying. Sick to death of grief. 

Here, her body surrounded by flowers, her heart in her throat, Dani begins to smile. The sun shines down.

”My parents burned in a fire,” he says. He is holding her hand. Dani keeps looking between his face and the open door.

Things like this shouldn’t happen in full view, in broad daylight. She thinks, briefly, that Pelle does not know how to hide. All his emotions are as clear as day on his face.

Dani pulls her hand away. Pelle frowns, a wrinkle of irritation appearing right between his eyes. He looks more annoyed than he did when two bodies plunged from a cliff.

(This is something she does not know yet, but she will soon: Pelle does know how to hide. He does it all the time. Even now.)

The day after the barn burning, Dani wakes up in a daze. For a moment, she feels nauseous without understanding why. A moment later, she leans over the side of the bed and wretches.

Someone, one of the girls, races over to her, gently lifting Dani’s hair out of her face. Soon, three more women join her, shushing and chittering their voices in calming waves. They are speaking Swedish, but Dani can no longer understand it the way she could when hallucinating. Her head is achingly clear.

A hand, she doesn’t know which one, sticks something under her nose, something smoking. Dani inhales deeply, and feels better as soon as she does. A smile stretches across her face like a cut. 

Across the room, Maja lounges on her bed, languidly brushing her bright red hair. She is watching Dani, her eyes clear and focused. Her eyes, Dani thinks, are bigger than usual.

In the middle of the night, in America, Dani paces the floor. She doesn’t know who to call. It is a week before her family dies. Before her sister kills them.

Eventually, she decides on Christian. She can already hear his voice in her head, the irritation, the annoyance. She can imagine his friends in the background, Mark needling, Josh arguing, Pelle quietly laughing.

She asks if she can join them at the bowling alley. Christian hems and haws and relents finally. Dani says I love you before she hangs up and says it again when she sees him an hour later.

The smile on Christian’s face is forced. The smile on Pelle’s face isn’t. His eyes skip over her body, from her eyes to her hair, her mouth, her legs, her breasts, her hips, and back up. She had always thought Christian was the most handsome of his friends; the other men were good looking, sure, but each had their own little facial quirks and oddities. When she first met Christian in college, she was almost unable to believe how hot he was, like he’d been created in a lab. Even more shocking was that he seemed to want her too: she of the thickish thighs and the smallish breasts and the shortish hair. 

Though Josh and Mark mumble hello, Pelle greets her brightly, watching as she steps carefully over the ice-slick pavement. "We were waiting for you," he says, his eyes still staring, burning a hole through her head. His gaze drifts to her chest again before snapping back up. "Shall we?"

"Definitely," she murmurs, taking Christian's hand and gives him a small smile. He isn't even looking at her. 

She forgets about this once everything happens, once she gets the call from the police. She forgets about almost everything.

She will remember it in Sweden. She will remember it when Pelle hands her a drawing of herself, her head adorned with flowers. She will remember it when he takes her hand. She will remember it when he presses a kiss to her mouth, the earth shivering and stretching itself like a cat just beneath her feet. She will remember the feeling of his eyes on her, and she will not be able to forget it again.

When the festival ends, Dani does not leave. She wouldn't begin to know how.

Two days after the fire, her belongings are no longer stored under her bed, replaced by a series of pristine white dresses. By the end of the festival, she has other young women attempting to converse with her in Swedish, men here and there bowing knowingly as they murmur, "May Queen."

It becomes routine to follow the women to their activities, it becomes routine to hold the hands of young children who are not hers, to weave flowers in her hair, to knead dough, soft and sticky, with the heel of her palm. She accepts each and every drink with a smile and a nod; she grows accustomed to the sight of flowers opening and closing in front of her eyes and to the feeling of dread in the pit of her stomach. She thinks of Christian's face, whole and perfect and then all at once melting.

Pelle does not leave either. For some reason, she had thought vaguely that he might return to America, return to his studies, but day after day he remains in the village. She sees him occasionally, whispering to Siv, muttering to the elders in their shared tongue. He meets her gaze and smiles. Every evening, the sun bright and high in the sky, Pelle sits next to her at dinner, his leg brushing against her leg, his elbow against her elbow. As they retire to sleep, he lies down in the bed beside hers. As he lays unconscious, unwatching, she looks over his face and feels something stirring in her gut, aching.

Each morning, just before she wakes, she can feel his eyes. How they roam across her body like hands.

"I was most excited for you to come," Pelle says, and it almost sounds like a confession. Like he is admitting to something terrible, like a rape or a murder.

How ridiculous, she thinks.

As if he would ever.

Siv brings her into an empty room and tells her one of the men is interested in her. Dani looks at her own legs as Siv speaks. Her dress is white, blossoms embroidering the hem. There is a yellow thread coming loose near her knee.

”What’s his name?” she asks quietly.

”Ebbe,” Siv replies. Dani knows Ebbe. He is at least 34, balding, thin as a rail. His hair is bright blonde, his features small and pointed. “It would be a good match. Lucky - what is your better word for it? Auspicious.”

Dani nods, her eyes still trained down. “Okay.”

For a moment, the older woman is silent. ”Or perhaps,” she says softly, carefully, “there is someone else you had preferred a little more? We would hate for you to feel...pushed. Pressed. If you had someone else in mind we can take it into account. We can study which man would make...more sense.”

Dani shakes her head, her mouth opening and closing like a fish. She does not look Siv in the eye, instead focusing on the spots where her hair has grown see-through. She wonders how old Siv is. Imagines her body falling to the earth. 

“No. Not really,” she says. “How much time do I have to respond?”

”You have two days from proposal to match.” Siv makes clear the hidden meaning, and it is not lost on Dani - two days until match. Not until her response.

”I will let you know if anyone else has expressed an interest,” Dani mumbles. “I know it is up to the will of the gods.” She doesn’t know where that came from - she doesn’t even know the name of what it is they worship.

Siv grins anyway, cheerful and blithe. “I hope to make a perfect match for our beloved May Queen.”

In her voice, Dani can hear a note of indulgence, an edge of mockery. Dani bows her head, revealing the thick roots of her hair.

Pelle spends the evening’s supper looking at her from across the table. At first, Dani pretends not to notice. With each successive sip of her drink, she grows more and more bold, allowing herself to glance and catch his eye and stare.

To his right, Maja whispers something into his ear, her face screwed up in something - anger? Annoyance? At her words, Pelle drops his eyes, keeping them down on his plate for the rest of the meal.

”I’m impressed with your English,” Dani tells him once in America. It is the first time they are ever alone together. It will not be the last. Christian is in the kitchen with Mark, the two of them arguing loudly over the intricacies of sharing beer.

”Thank you,” Pelle says, smiling. “The community I am from, in Sweden, everyone works together to educate, to teach. I owe it all to them. Everything I am.”

Dani smiles tightly in return. She keeps looking over at the kitchen, hoping Christian will come back and save her from more pained small talk. 

“What about you?” Pelle says suddenly, breaking the silence. “Who raised you?"

"Um," she starts. "My parents, I guess. And teachers."

He nods, thoughtful. "You misunderstand me," he says, each word crisp and clear. "I don't mean to ask who raised you. I mean to ask - who do you you owe?"

Dani stares at him, open-mouthed. She imagines something quickly, in a flash, like an image appearing and disappearing in her mind: a snake, growing from her mouth, a set of tulips in her eye sockets, her clothes falling from her shoulders. She blinks, and it is gone.

"Dani," he murmurs, his body tilted to hers, "to whom do you owe your self?"

She wakes up to the feeling of something in her hair, tangled. Fingers threading through the strands, brushing stray locks away from her cheeks. Pelle's face next to hers is open, watching. He does not smile or frown; he simply stares.

"Dani," he whispers. She can see his face clearly in the half-lighted room. She wonders what time it is, a question she hasn't considered for a while. He is gazing at her - there is no other word for it.

She hums, stretching her sore limbs. It must be the middle of the night, the witching hour (this is what her mother called it, when she was alive). "Pelle," she says, "what are you doing?"

"You should come with me," he says. "I will show you something."

(Here is what he will show her: something beautiful and terrible and not at all what she asked for. Here, he will say, here is my heart in my hands, blood still running through it. He will hold it out to her, his chest open, all sinews and gore. Take it. It's yours.

When he first saw her, it was like there was a spell cast over him. He could see her clearly, more clearly than his friends, his sacrifices. He imagined her body sheathed in blossoms and blooms, as wretched and bright and lovely as spring. He imagined her body in his arms, in his hands, against his chest. He imagined keeping her forever. His. For him.

Pelle will never tell Dani this. She will figure it out on her own anyway.)

Dani follows him into the forest.

This is something Dani is loathe to admit: she still wants love. All the time. She misses Christian, if only for the scraps of affection he did give her, when he could be bothered. The hands and bodies that surround her here, the voices shifting, sighing, mirroring her, make her feel touched in a way she does not fully understand. Their affection is alien to her, a different language. She misses the feeling of being touched by one person. Someone who will love her enough to love her with their complete self.

When they reach a clearing, Pelle stops abruptly and turns to her. "Look up," he says, and when she does, she gasps.

Above her, the sky is blanketed with stars, bigger and brighter than she's ever seen. There are swirls of clouds, the bright circle of the moon, constellations she doesn’t know the name of. "It's amazing,” she says. “It’s beautiful.”

"It's almost the end of summer," he continues. "Soon, you'll be able to see it even better, when the nights get darker."

The implicit assumption in his words - that she is here for the fall, for the year, for the rest of her life - is what makes Dani finally look at him. Pelle meets her eyes, a smile turning up the corners of his mouth. No, not a smile, something else. It’s a look of pride, or satisfaction, or victory. He closes the distance between them in two paces and then his mouth is on hers. And so is the rest of him.

Dani’s hands are up automatically, frozen somewhere between pushing him away and pulling him closer and closer and closer, until she can fit him in her mouth, swallow him down. Her hands stay up like that, suspended in the air, for the longest time.

It takes about two hours to die from gas poisoning. Less if you go the route her sister did, inhaling directly from the source. Her parents, the first responders told her, likely felt nothing, slept right through their own deaths.

Dani becomes obsessed with this for a time after it happens. How long it takes to die. 4 weeks without food, 4 days without water, 4 minutes without air. Falling from a height, it’s immediate. Same with a snapped neck. A heart attack can last hours or seconds. Same with gunshot wounds. Same with murder.

Being burned alive takes minutes. But they are the most agonizing minutes.

The other women lead her to the same room where she saw Christian, where she finally saw him for who he was. They are already nude when they strip her of her clothes, tear their fingers through her hair and drape it artfully over her shoulders, lay her body down on a bed of flowers. Dani feels exposed, indecent. She resists the urge to cover herself as she lays there, her arms and legs covered in gooseflesh.

Siv had said Ebbe was eagerly awaiting this day. When the door opens, Dani shivers.

Pelle is standing in the doorway, a robe around his shoulders. When he opens it, she can see that he is already hard, the skin of his groin flushed red.

She can’t help but gape. She feels tricked, hoodwinked, perhaps more so than she has since arriving. She says nothing as he approaches, as he kneels in front of her. 

“Why are you here?” she finally chokes out, when he is close enough that she can whisper the words without fear of eavesdropping.

”Because I asked,” he murmurs gently. “Because of last night. Because I want you.”

(A few words, unsaid, aloud or otherwise: because I don’t want to share.)

Relief floods through her, even as another, smaller part of her nudges traitorously at her conscience. She remembers Mark making her laugh for the first time after her family died, without even trying. She remembers Josh dropping sleeping pills into her hands, a nod of comraderie. Simon and Connie, holding hands, holding each other. She remembers how much she loved Christian. How much she used to care. And how little she cares now.

Dani smiles, forgetting why she was ever afraid.

Pelle moves his mouth to the space between her legs and licks his way inside her with his tongue. His hand is on her stomach, holding her down. He sucks her body up as if through a straw.

Her eyes flutter shut, and she can hear the walls echoing her moans.

When she was a child, there was a book of fairy tales in her house, the edges of the pages coated in gold, the spine knobby and leathered.

There was the story of Snow White, the story of the seven swans, the story of Bearskin, the story of the girl with red shoes who danced until her feet were chopped off. Witches turning men into animals, girls losing limbs to vanity, everything and everyone oversleeping and overeating and dying in misery.

Dani will never return to that home again. She will never see that family again. After a long time, no one will remember that there ever was a girl named Dani who lived in that house.

But there was.

Before he kisses her for the second time, Pelle opens her mouth with his fingers, catches her bottom lip between his teeth. He walks her legs over to one of the trees in the clearing, pressing her against the rough and ribbed trunk. She can’t help but kiss him in return, her tongue slipping over his tongue. He is touching her all over, like he can’t decide what to feel first, her ass and her waist and her tits and her hair and her cheeks. She can feel his cock, hard and ignored, between his legs. She feels overheated, overextended, her face flushed, her mouth swollen.

All at once, he is turning her body around, lifting her dress over her ass and tugging her underclothes halfway down her legs. His fingers work their way inside her before she can catch her breath. Her back is pressed to his chest. His fingers slide through her easily, wet and clenching hard around his hand.

”Do it,” she hears herself saying, reaching back to move her hand over his hard on, “do it, come on, get inside already.”

”Yes,” he hisses, and fumbles hurriedly to push his pants down his legs. He presses himself against her cunt, wetting the head of his cock, and slowly works his way inside. Dani keens, her head falling forward, her fingers digging into his hips. He is holding her up as he fucks into her, his hands tearing down the top of her dress to expose her breasts to the cold air. “Yes, that’s it.”

”That’s it,” she repeats. “That’s it.” Her heart is beating hard in her chest and between her legs.

He fucks her for what feels like forever, until she is shaking on her toes, until she is about to edge into an orgasm.

Pelle moves her to the ground, his hand holding her shoulder against the ground, her face rubbing into the dirt. She reaches a hand down her body and rubs, and a moment later she is shivering and shaking and crying out as she cums.

A few more thrusts of his hips, and she can feel Pelle spilling into her, his spend dripping down her thighs. He collapses beside her, both of them breathing hard. He wipes his cum away with his fingers and, after a moment of thought, pushes it back inside.

Dani wakes up when the sun is already high in the sky. Her eyes are gritty, her vision blurred. For a moment, she thinks she can make out the shape of Christian’s face in the bed beside her, his eyes bugging out of his head, his mouth contorted in a grimace.

She blinks, and it’s gone. Pelle smiles at her as he sits up and stretches.

”Want to go somewhere?” he asks once she’s changed into a clean white dress. She imagines she can feel him still between her legs, feel him dripping down her body like blood from a wound. She nods, returning his grin.

Dani follows Pelle out, through a verdant field, through yellow flowers, through trees and branches that seem to wave and shift in front of her eyes. The sun, which never really seems to leave them, beats down.


End file.
